Does the Motor System Facilitate Spatial Imagery?

Abstract. Recent studies have ascertained a link between the motor system and imagery in children. A motor effect on imagery is demonstrated by the influence of stimuli-related movement constraints (i. e., constraints defined by the musculoskeletal system) on mental rotation, or by interference effects due to participants’ own body movements or body postures. This link is usually seen as qualitatively different or stronger in children as opposed to adults. In the present research, we put this interpretation to further scrutiny using a new paradigm: In a motor condition we asked our participants (kindergartners and third-graders) to manually rotate a circular board with a covered picture on it. This condition was compared with a perceptual condition where the board was rotated by an experimenter. Additionally, in a pure imagery condition, children were instructed to merely imagine the rotation of the board. The children’s task was to mark the presumed end position of a salient detail of the respective picture. The children’s performance was clearly the worst in the pure imagery condition. However, contrary to what embodiment theories would suggest, there was no difference in participants’ performance between the active rotation (i. e., motor) and the passive rotation (i. e., perception) condition. Control experiments revealed that this was also the case when, in the perception condition, gaze shifting was controlled for and when the board was rotated mechanically rather than by the experimenter. Our findings indicate that young children depend heavily on external support when imagining physical events. Furthermore, they indicate that motor-assisted imagery is not generally superior to perceptually driven dynamic imagery.

Download Full-text

Face Imagery Is Based on Featural Representations

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169.55.1.47 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 55 (1) ◽

pp. 47-53 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Janek S. Lobmaier ◽

Fred W. Mast

Keyword(s):

Mental Imagery ◽

Face Processing ◽

Experimental Conditions ◽

Imagery Condition ◽

Configural Information ◽

Perception Condition ◽

Test Face ◽

Configural Representations ◽

Configural Face Processing ◽

Better Than

Abstract. The effect of imagery on featural and configural face processing was investigated using blurred and scrambled faces. By means of blurring, featural information is reduced; by scrambling a face into its constituent parts configural information is lost. Twenty-four participants learned ten faces together with the sound of a name. In following matching-to-sample tasks participants had to decide whether an auditory presented name belonged to a visually presented scrambled or blurred face in two experimental conditions. In the imagery condition, the name was presented prior to the visual stimulus and participants were required to imagine the corresponding face as clearly and vividly as possible. In the perception condition name and test face were presented simultaneously, thus no facilitation via mental imagery was possible. Analyses of the hit values showed that in the imagery condition scrambled faces were recognized significantly better than blurred faces whereas there was no such effect for the perception condition. The results suggest that mental imagery activates featural representations more than configural representations.

Download Full-text

Perceptual Illusions in Imagery

European Psychologist ◽

10.1027/1016-9040.3.4.281 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 3 (4) ◽

pp. 281-288 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Fiorella Giusberti ◽

Cesare Cornoldi ◽

Rossana De Beni ◽

Manfredo Massironi

Keyword(s):

Information Processing ◽

Visual Information ◽

Mental Image ◽

Ponzo Illusion ◽

Optical Illusion ◽

Imagery Condition ◽

Optical Illusions ◽

Perceptual Illusions ◽

Perception Condition ◽

Early Phases

A mental image is in many ways analogous to a percept but it is not completely identical to it. In some respects, visual perception and visual imagery work in different ways. One area which is worth examining with regard to similarities and asymmetries between perception and imagery is the initial phases of visual information processing. The literature includes some references to the equivalence of imagery and perception in optical illusions, but data are contradictory. In our view, a mental image should not be particularly sensitive to variables which are critical in producing an optical illusion, i.e., variables affecting the early phases of information processing and field global effects. Our hypothesis is that an optical illusion will be present in a perception condition but not in an equivalent imagery condition. To test this, we carried out two experiments using the Ebbinghaus illusion and the Ponzo illusion. The results confirmed our hypothesis, demonstrating that there are indeed asymmetries between perception and imagery and that such differences mainly concern specific perceptual processes that differ from those involved in the generation of a mental image.

Download Full-text

The informal justice paradigm and the appropriation of ‘local reality’

Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly ◽

10.53386/nilq.v64i3.360 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 64 (3) ◽

pp. 397-409

Author(s):

Torunn Wimpelmann

Keyword(s):

Rule Of Law ◽

Local Population ◽

External Support ◽

Local Context ◽

New Paradigm ◽

Informal Justice ◽

Parallel Form ◽

National Institutions

This article traces the emergence of a new paradigm within rule of law assistance and the forms of appropriation that operate through it. An informal justice paradigm promotes external support to non-state justice as more sensitive to local aspirations and as a more efficient form of intervention. I problematise this paradigm by unpacking both its discursive premises and the actual mechanisms through which aid to informal justice can take place. I argue that the celebrated sensitivity to local context, contrary to assertions, in the last instance empower outside experts, whose mandate it becomes to validate ‘local reality’ and render it amendable for intervention. In sum, the informal justice paradigm enables a parallel form of governance where national institutions are deemed optional at best and irrelevant at worst, where ultimate authority is exercised by international expertise and where accountability to the local population is, on the whole, eroded.

Download Full-text

Hearing in the Mind's Ear: A PET Investigation of Musical Imagery and Perception

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.1996.8.1.29 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 29-46 ◽

Cited By ~ 231

Author(s):

Robert J. Zatorre ◽

Andrea R. Halpern ◽

David W. Perry ◽

Ernst Meyer ◽

Alan C. Evans

Keyword(s):

Parietal Lobe ◽

Normal Subjects ◽

Auditory Information ◽

Imagery Task ◽

Neural Basis ◽

Image Subtraction ◽

Perceptual Condition ◽

Imagery Condition ◽

Musical Imagery ◽

Auditory Cortices

Neuropsychological studies have suggested that imagery processes may be mediated by neuronal mechanisms similar to those used in perception. To test this hypothesis, and to explore the neural basis for song imagery, 12 normal subjects were scanned using the water bolus method to measure cerebral blood flow (CBF) during the performance of three tasks. In the control condition subjects saw pairs of words on each trial and judged which word was longer. In the perceptual condition subjects also viewed pairs of words, this time drawn from a familiar song; simultaneously they heard the corresponding song, and their task was to judge the change in pitch of the two cued words within the song. In the imagery condition, subjects performed precisely the same judgment as in the perceptual condition, but with no auditory input. Thus, to perform the imagery task correctly an internal auditory representation must be accessed. Paired-image subtraction of the resulting pattern of CBF, together with matched MRI for anatomical localization, revealed that both perceptual and imagery. tasks produced similar patterns of CBF changes, as compared to the control condition, in keeping with the hypothesis. More specifically, both perceiving and imagining songs are associated with bilateral neuronal activity in the secondary auditory cortices, suggesting that processes within these regions underlie the phenomenological impression of imagined sounds. Other CBF foci elicited in both tasks include areas in the left and right frontal lobes and in the left parietal lobe, as well as the supplementary motor area. This latter region implicates covert vocalization as one component of musical imagery. Direct comparison of imagery and perceptual tasks revealed CBF increases in the inferior frontal polar cortex and right thalamus. We speculate that this network of regions may be specifically associated with retrieval and/or generation of auditory information from memory.

Download Full-text

Solar Filaments as Tracers of Subsurface Processes

International Astronomical Union Colloquium ◽

10.1017/s0252921100064459 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 179 ◽

pp. 177-183

Author(s):

D. M. Rust

Keyword(s):

Magnetic Fields ◽

Magnetic Flux ◽

Coronal Mass Ejections ◽

Interplanetary Space ◽

Intermediate Stage ◽

Coronal Plasma ◽

Magnetic Helicity ◽

The Sun ◽

New Paradigm ◽

Solar Filaments

AbstractSolar filaments are discussed in terms of two contrasting paradigms. The standard paradigm is that filaments are formed by condensation of coronal plasma into magnetic fields that are twisted or dimpled as a consequence of motions of the fields’ sources in the photosphere. According to a new paradigm, filaments form in rising, twisted flux ropes and are a necessary intermediate stage in the transfer to interplanetary space of dynamo-generated magnetic flux. It is argued that the accumulation of magnetic helicity in filaments and their coronal surroundings leads to filament eruptions and coronal mass ejections. These ejections relieve the Sun of the flux generated by the dynamo and make way for the flux of the next cycle.

Download Full-text

The Effects of Four Key Strategies Within a Communicative Reading Strategies Construct: A Single-Subject Design for Two Third Graders With Language-Learning Disabilities

Contemporary Issues in Communication Science and Disorders ◽

10.1044/cicsd_27_f_143 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 27 (Fall) ◽

pp. 143-153

Author(s):

Monica L. Bellon ◽

Lori Allyson Cantrell

Keyword(s):

Learning Disabilities ◽

Language Learning ◽

Reading Strategies ◽

Third Graders ◽

Single Subject ◽

Single Subject Design ◽

Language Learning Disabilities ◽

Subject Design ◽

Communicative Reading Strategies

Download Full-text

Self-Prioritization Beyond Perception

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000307 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 62 (6) ◽

pp. 415-425 ◽

Cited By ~ 21

Author(s):

Sarah Schäfer ◽

Dirk Wentura ◽

Christian Frings

Keyword(s):

The Self ◽

Stimulus Category ◽

Abstract Concept ◽

Conceptual Level ◽

New Paradigm ◽

Stimulus Features ◽

Relevant Word ◽

Word Shape

Abstract. Recently, Sui, He, and Humphreys (2012) introduced a new paradigm to measure perceptual self-prioritization processes. It seems that arbitrarily tagging shapes to self-relevant words (I, my, me, and so on) leads to speeded verification times when matching self-relevant word shape pairings (e.g., me – triangle) as compared to non-self-relevant word shape pairings (e.g., stranger – circle). In order to analyze the level at which self-prioritization takes place we analyzed whether the self-prioritization effect is due to a tagging of the self-relevant label and the particular associated shape or due to a tagging of the self with an abstract concept. In two experiments participants showed standard self-prioritization effects with varying stimulus features or different exemplars of a particular stimulus-category suggesting that self-prioritization also works at a conceptual level.

Download Full-text